1. It is inevitable, if I keep trying, that I'll succeed. A professional is an amateur who didn’t quit. Success is simply learning from failure.
2. I won't take rejection personally. Each rejection is one step closer to publication. Most rejections have nothing to do with how good the writing is. It's a numbers game. The more I try, the more I'll sell.
3. I will have faith in my work, but always remain open to suggestion and change. The day I stop listening to criticism is the day I stop growing as a writer, and growth leads to book deals.
4. I will keep writing, keep submitting, keep marketing, and never surrender. Ultimately, success in this business rests squarely on one person’s shoulders: Mine.
5. Depression, anger, resentment, envy, disappointment, jealousy, worry, and a sense of entitlement are all a big waste of time and energy better spent writing.
6. 2007 will be here in just 368 days. It will come whether I've reached my goals or not. So 2006 will be the year I reach my goals. I control my destiny, and I will succeed.
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15 comments:
It's difficult to perceive reality while in the trenches.
Thanks for the mantra to live by.
That's powerful stuff. Keep up the great work, Joe!
Stacey
Perceiving the reality is step one to achieving success.
Step two is kicking its ass.
I just made that up.
Well done, Joe. We're with you, and you with us.
Very nice, Joe.
doolols: Quotable
Mark: Add this to your mantra:
I will stop huffing paint thinner
I will stop huffing paint thinner
Good stuff! I'm tacking this us beside my desk! Along with...I will find that secret page!
Hey there, just wanted to pop in and say hi. We haven't met, but I was pointed in the direction of your blog and have enjoyed it very much so far. So ... hi! LoL.
Discovered your blog via a friend and after reading your mantra for 06,I've been working on mine. Cheers....Kelly
Question: does this assume that your writing is actually good enough to be marketed, or are you saying that it's possible to market anything if you try hard enough?
There's on ongoing debate on this blog about the importance of talent.
The problem is that talent is subjective--one man's brilliance is another man's borefest.
Editors believe they know talent whent hey see it, yet they consistently lose money on books they buy.
My view is much simpler. If you meet all of the minimum requirements of a story---the writing is servicable, you have decent plotting and characterization, the story fits within a known genre---then persistence and luck are the things that sell you.
Talent, in rare cases, can be enough. But read 5000 published books, then tell me how many of them are better than yours.
All of them deserved to be published. That doesn't mean all of them are good books.
So I guess it's a little from both, eh? Your writing has to be up to a minimum standard, but you can sell something that's only up to the minimum standard if you try hard enough.
Happy New Years, everybody!
Stacey
I am so happy I found you and your site.
I am searching for tips on writing an outline. Just purchased The Writer's Market and am a little intimidated - more excited.
Christine
Well, it's 2011 and you're thoroughly kicking ass. Seems like the mantras worked - and WELL!
I also have this mentality, but here I am 5 years later than you. Really about 2 years later, I've had stuff at Amazon for a couple of years now and it's starting to pick up steam.
My mantra is also something about kicking ass...
If I can stop doing all 147 things I'm into, and just focus on writing... there is nothing that can stop the Mike Fook Steam Engine from crushing everything in the way!
Just finding your older articles here - glad to see you were trying so hard this long ago - makes me feel like you're not so bad for killing it in 2011. Cheers man, Mike Fook
Just linked in here from the Zorro post. I know I'm 6 years late to the comments, but I wanted to say that I really appreciated #5 A LOT. The writing community is full of people whose lives would be much better if they redirected all of the energy they waste on their venom towards their writing. You can't be in it for the long haul if you set yourself up to implode from the start.
I love sitting here in 2012 and knowing that you made it. And it's true for me now. We'll see where I am in 2018.
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